[HN Gopher] Detroit's revival takes shape after decades of decay
___________________________________________________________________
Detroit's revival takes shape after decades of decay
Author : PaulHoule
Score : 85 points
Date : 2025-01-31 12:10 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com)
| cebert wrote:
| I live in the greater Detroit area and would love for it to
| become a thriving tech community. While articles like this
| portray a thriving tech scene here, it's not entirely accurate.
| Many automotive companies claim a need for tech talent but
| establish labs and locations in the Bay Area. For instance,
| Rivian's vehicle software isn't developed in Michigan, despite
| being HQed here.
|
| The prominent tech employers in our area are Rocket, United
| Wholesale Mortgage, and GM. I believe our tech talent lacks the
| competitiveness of other tech hubs. I hope the state of Michigan
| can take proactive steps to enhance the appeal of our state and
| Detroit as desirable tech locations, but we must acknowledge that
| we are not yet a thriving tech hub.
| toyg wrote:
| The tech company I work for is listed on the NASDAQ and
| headquartered in Birmingham, a few minutes out of Detroit -
| originally it was in Rochester. There is _a lot_ of money in
| Michigan. The main issue I can see is that you have to be in
| the right circles - there is definitely a class divide in the
| state, and it 's pretty brutal.
| whaleofatw2022 wrote:
| Yeah class divides are weird in Southeast MI.
|
| At smaller shops it leads to a lot of hubris from management.
| I've worked at more than one shop where circles of UofM grads
| insist on outsourcing everything new and having in-house
| employees only do maintenance or minor features. If you
| didn't go to UofM your opinion is worthless.
|
| Leads to incredibly toxic shops and terrible software.
| neilv wrote:
| I've seen that kind of thinking by _some_ grads of MIT,
| Harvard, and Stanford, too. I think it 's a minority of
| them, but not-unusual.
|
| My position is, if you want a lifestyle company (and maybe
| a self-congratulatory echo chamber), then maybe it's fine
| to be a "<school> shop". But if you want to hire the best
| people, and be informed by a d-v-rs-ty of perspectives and
| experiences, then you really need to not be so insular.
| pc86 wrote:
| Which is kind of funny since you're talking about UofM, not
| Stanford or MIT. It's a good school but there are literally
| hundreds of good schools in the US.
|
| In my experience lots of folks educated at top top tier
| institutions are pretty humble about it, and acknowledge
| places where other institutions are as good or better than
| their alma mater. A coworker of mine recently got his MBA
| from Penn which is not only Ivy League but consistently
| ranked top 2-3 MBA programs in the country, and currently
| tied with Stanford for #1 according to USNWR. He never
| brings it up, doesn't really talk about it much when it
| does get brought up, and I don't think I've ever heard him
| criticize anyone's education or experience unfairly (we've
| sat on several hiring panels together).
|
| The problem is when you go to a good-not-great school. If
| the top 10 schools for a particular program are considered
| "Tier 1" the people who went to #15 or #20 are going to be
| absolutely horrible to work with. It's like they think they
| need to prove they could have gone to a better school but
| didn't for whatever reason.
|
| I avoided this trap by only going to small schools nobody
| has ever heard of.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| I have refereed basketball at a very high level (think
| Div 1 College, NBA G-league/minor league), and in my
| earlier days I did a lot of junior high-level games, and
| I noticed very much the same, although more "vocal" with
| the parents than players. There seem to be three tiers:
|
| 1 - the low-level games, where it's fun, and no-one
| thinks it is more than it is, and everyone is generally
| chill. 2 - the very high-level games, where even the
| parents know that the last thing their kid or the team
| needs is them messing with the referees, etc.
|
| But most of the issues came in between. The kids who were
| absolutely talented, but were never going to play
| professionally. But they were still well ahead of the
| first group. Those were the troubles, where parents,
| coaches, and players felt that they truly belonged in
| group 2, but the only thing holding them back was the
| referees or whatever else and had a need to prove
| themselves. Never has a quote been more appropriate from
| Top Gun, "Son, your ego is writing checks your body can't
| cash."
| Drunkfoowl wrote:
| I work at a hyperscaler, for autos, in Detroit.
|
| It's the worst it's been since 2020 imo. Stella is cost cutting
| and just lost their ceo, ford is attached to google, GM literally
| just left the rencen.
|
| The t1s are being canabalized.
|
| This article is a joke.
| Andrew-Koper wrote:
| Everything in that long, Guardian article is true
| richk449 wrote:
| What is a hyperscaler for autos?
| RALaBarge wrote:
| 30 miles West in Ann Arbor, there are tech gigs but not tons of
| them. If you are apart of the University of Michigan, there are
| tons of opportunities via the college and the groups there, but
| if not there aren't tons of openings.
|
| Detroit itself is an amazing city, but it isn't a tech hub, nor
| is it for everyone. It is the shell of the automotive companies
| that started to move their operations of out the country in the
| 50s-70s. Check out the book "Origins of the Urban Crisis" to get
| an understanding of the decay in Detroit and other large cities
| who the Big 3 have abandoned for a profit.
|
| All of my friends that I have brought to the D are always weirded
| out by how big the city is, yet how few people you actually see
| outside of the entertainment district. The streets and sidewalks
| can be fully empty, with a 6 lane road that has so many holes
| that it is more pothole than road now.
|
| This piece is nothing but an advertisement for Dan Gilbert.
| ghaff wrote:
| I was in Detroit for a big tech event a couple years back. The
| more or less universal consensus was that, yes, the Riverwalk
| during the day (and the Convention Center there) were quite
| nice. But people felt uncomfortable away from large groups of
| event-goers at night and there were a few incidents. It
| definitely felt different from other events I've been to. Some
| of this is admittedly probably a matter of familiarity; I
| generally know to just avoid the Tenderloin for example.
| francisofascii wrote:
| I'm curious if Lansing, the capital of Michigan, offers
| opportunities for government contractor work due to its
| proximity. With Lansing, Detroit, and Ann Arbor relatively
| close to each other, semi-remote roles might be feasible.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| > fully empty
|
| Like that.
| gcanyon wrote:
| St. Louis is similar: you can walk from downtown to empty
| grass-filled blocks in about fifteen minutes.
|
| My favorite story is the origin of the City Museum (which,
| shoutout to the City Museum, it's awesome). The City Museum
| building is in a former factory, it's about 11 stories tall and
| fills a city block. It's on the edge of downtown about a dozen
| blocks from the Arch. The artist behind the museum bought the
| building in the '90s for something like $700,000. That's a
| whole-ass industrial building, walkable from anywhere in
| downtown St. Louis, for under a million dollars.
| dgfitz wrote:
| I think most US cities are like that in the "downtown to
| disheveled in 15 minutes" sense.
| nojs wrote:
| > This piece is nothing but an advertisement for Dan Gilbert.
|
| For an outlet that "thanks to our reader-funded model, what we
| cover isn't dictated by the algorithms of the tech titans" they
| did manage to cram a surprising number of ads in there
| tokioyoyo wrote:
| I was there about a year ago with a couple of friends, stopped
| for a night while driving through Michigan to go up north. It
| was just so eerie throughout the entire day. Incredibly wide
| streets, but sometimes you would walk for 5 mins before you saw
| a single soul. Maybe because it was a bit of a chilly day as
| well, but it felt like the city was built for way more people,
| and there just isn't enough now.
| ghaff wrote:
| Other people makes a big difference.
|
| Even back when NYC was a lot more iffy than it is today in
| general, I never really felt uncomfortable walking down
| somewhere like Fifth Avenue late at night because there were
| enough people at night. Various midwest cities can be pretty
| eerie--especially after business hours. The downtowns are
| often not that busy during the day and they're deserted--
| except maybe some local pockets--after dark.
| Yeul wrote:
| This is an interesting point. In the 1980s Amsterdam was
| dirt poor but it was never empty. In fact it attracted all
| kinds of people who wanted to live an "alternative"
| lifestyle in cheap real estate. Communists, artists, gay
| people.
|
| New York no matter what happens will always be located in
| the most densely populated part of America.
| wing-_-nuts wrote:
| I've actually looked at Ann Arbor before as I adore college
| towns and was looking at trying to find one in the great lakes
| region as a forever / retirement destination. Given you're from
| the area would you have any others to recommend?
|
| Things I'm mainly looking for:
|
| * A climate change refuge
|
| * No 'lake effect' snow
|
| * Continuing education opportunities (i.e. auditing classes as
| a retiree)
|
| * A good public / uni library system
|
| * Walkable density
|
| * Reasonable cost of living (yea, this is gonna be higher in
| college towns)
|
| I realize that moving to the great lakes region and wanting to
| avoid snow are naturally in conflict. I have a disability so
| I'm just bearing in mind my balance and ability to shovel snow
| in my old age.
| ElevenLathe wrote:
| You might want to look at Kalamazoo.
| filoleg wrote:
| I have an alternative proposal to Ann Arbor for this that
| hits every single one of your criteria, but with a plus-minus
| (with a caveat, but i will elaborate on that later) regarding
| reasonable cost of living. That would be Seattle area.
|
| I will go point by point.
|
| The good:
|
| * According to their own Climate Vulnerability Assessment[0],
| the region is fairly resilient to the impacts of the climate
| change.
|
| * There is no lake effect snow (despite being adjacent to
| multiple fantastic lakes). I've lived there for 7 years, and
| the amount of snow was much less than even in places like
| Atlanta. The amount of rainfall is ridiculously small too
| (despite the stereotype), and it is usually just drizzle that
| doesn't necessitate even an umbrella 99% of the time. It got
| nothing on typical east coast rains that just pour like hell.
| I was able to commute to work on motorcycle for about 90-95%
| days of the year. For any east coast city I've been to
| (ATL/NYC/DC), I don't foresee that number being even above
| 50% (most of the time it would be either too cold or too hot
| or too rainy/snowy/dangerous).
|
| * UW is a very popular and common option for continuing
| education opportunities. Had friends who would take classes
| there for fun outside of work, just to fill gaps in whichever
| topics they were curious about (typically math). Seems like
| there is a large population that does this, and UW is a great
| school.
|
| * Public library system is the best I've experienced hands
| down. Free, many accessible locations, and libraries even
| have stuff like 3d printers and hackerspaces available for
| anyone's use.
|
| * Had plenty of friends who lived there with no car for
| years, and they have zero plans to ever buy one. Especially
| with the public transit lightrail having some really
| significant expansions completed recently (with many more
| nearing the completion; the lightrail to eastside is
| something i am personally excited for)
|
| The mixed:
|
| * Reasonable cost of leaving is the one plus-minus I
| mentioned. The minus is that it isn't cheap. It is much
| cheaper than Bay Area/NYC/etc., but it is still a major city
| area. The plus is that there is no state income tax. So, in
| retirement, your 401k withdrawals would not get any taxes
| skimmed off on the state level. This point is by far the
| biggest potential concern I have as far as Seattle being a
| good suggestion for you.
|
| The bad:
|
| * While the weather is amazing temperature/precipitation-wise
| year-round, clear skies and sun outside of summer are not
| that common. Grey skies for more than half of the month
| during winter eventually got to me.
|
| Bonus points:
|
| * If you are into outdoorsy stuff
| (skiing/snowboarding/hiking/kayaking/lake stuff), I cannot
| think of a better area. So many options within just a couple
| of hours. Hell, Discovery Park (calling it a park feels like
| a misnomer, because it is a massive cliffside forest, fields,
| and a beach) is just a 15 min drive from downtown.
|
| * Flying to asian countries is much faster and cheaper than
| from east coast (13 hour non-stop flight to Japan from NJ vs.
| a 7-8hr flight from Seattle).
|
| 0. https://seattle.gov/documents/departments/opcd/seattleplan
| /s...
| psunavy03 wrote:
| There is no state income tax . . . yet. But the "soak the
| rich" band is already tuning up, and with the cost of
| living being what it is out here, "rich" will probably
| include anyone who can afford a house.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I would not be too worried about that. Washington
| legislators just outlawed income tax last year. While
| those who want earned income tax are vocal, the support
| for the initiative against income tax was so widespread
| that the politicians did not want it on the ballot for
| fear of voters being swayed to vote for the other ballot
| initiatives.
|
| https://ballotpedia.org/Washington_Initiative_2111,_Prohi
| bit...
| psunavy03 wrote:
| I wasn't just referring to income tax, but things like
| capital gains and so forth. The state Supreme Court ruled
| an excise tax on capital gains was not an income tax, and
| though the limit is like $250K currently, that could
| change. And the party that runs Washington is the one
| that's currently on the warpath about "rich tech bros."
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Yes, that (and the LTCi payroll tax) was some nonsense
| and does bring into question the integrity of the
| leadership. But the 2111 legislation gives me hope that
| they aren't stupid enough to get rid of the states' most
| attractive feature for a young, productive workforce.
|
| Especially in a future where young, productive people are
| going to be in shorter and shorter supply.
| filoleg wrote:
| They've been on that warpath since the glory days of msft
| and amazon (i.e., for multiple decades at least). All
| with that same party running things back then in WA. All
| they've accomplished is shooting themselves in the foot
| here and there, without any meaningful progress.
| tzs wrote:
| But note that support of the ballot initiative to repeal
| the capital gains tax was not widespread. 63% voted to
| reject it and keep the tax.
| filoleg wrote:
| There are attempts at it at least once every decade, and
| every time they get squashed in the very end, even if
| they are passing the vote and get pretty much to the
| finish line. Any form of taxing it is against state
| constitution, and the state struck down any previous
| attempts at loopholes around that provision of the
| constitution.
|
| I agree with the sibling comment that this is not
| something to realistically worry about at all.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > Any form of taxing it is against state constitution
|
| The WA state constitution says non uniform property taxes
| are not allowed, and 1930 WA Supreme Court ruled income
| was property.
|
| A flat income tax would have been allowed, until last
| year when income tax was outlawed, but not with enough
| votes to amend the state constitution.
| wing-_-nuts wrote:
| I had previously looked at the PNW. I adore seattle , but
| the earthquake / tsunami / wild fire risk projections are
| extreme. I know they're retrofitting a lot of infra and
| housing there, but a cascadia fault quake / tsunami is
| gonna be a bad time even if fema's 'everything east of I-5
| is toast' is overhyped.
| ghaff wrote:
| At some point, you need to do the pro/con analysis. If
| you add minimum natural disasters risk, based on when I
| knew _something_ about datacenter siting details, you
| were looking at maybe Las Vegas area (which also has
| access to Hoover Dam power). But, now, you 're in extreme
| desert heat (predictably) in the summer and probably
| don't tick off a lot of other considerations either.
| evantbyrne wrote:
| Grand Rapids and Traverse City might meet your criteria, but
| it's hard to say given how subjectively they are worded. If
| you want to live in a town with a large university, then
| obviously just look at the top three universities by size in
| each state.
| ghaff wrote:
| Yeah, I'd look at university towns and small cities
| generally in the northern end of the country. Though it's
| probably not just the largest universities--there are
| smaller schools that caan still give a place a feel of a
| university town. Then pick some climate metrics like
| average inches of snow. Create a shortish list and go from
| there. I suspect some of the criteria are also less
| important than others.
|
| Continuing ed opportunities are probably actually one of
| the tougher things. There are often things you can do
| informally with unis if you know the landscape but it's not
| something that's routinely offered as part as I know. There
| are community colleges and nightime continuing ed but,
| honestly, I'd probably mostly look online for that sort of
| thing.
| wing-_-nuts wrote:
| Re: continuing education: I just wanted a way to take
| some classes and gain access to the university library.
| Technically I have access to lifetimes of material online
| via books, papers, MOOCs, etc; but it would be really
| nice take a philosophy class and actually be able to have
| in depth discussions, or check out some book that's never
| been published on kindle.
| ghaff wrote:
| The in-depth discussions part (i.e. things like seminars)
| is probably difficult without registering for a class in
| some manner--which, in turn, is difficult at a
| traditional university without enrolling, outside of some
| continuing ed program. My undergrad university library is
| also accessible (at least if you look like you belong)
| post-COVID in the sense that you don't have to card in
| but even I (as an alum and moderately large donor) would
| almost certainly have to pay an annual access fee to
| check something out. It also has some generally
| accessible activities in January but you need to know
| where to look.
|
| Universities/colleges are a pretty good source of
| cultural activities and other things in a town but their
| classes, and to a lesser degree libraries (it depends as
| some libraries let people just walk-in though not check-
| out material; others control access pretty tightly), are
| not really public resources.
| ghaff wrote:
| You probably need to decide if you want no "lake effect" snow
| specifically or just don't want a lot of snow. It still snows
| a lot in places that aren't Buffalo or Syracuse. Just in New
| York state Ithaca is pretty much out of the lake effect snow
| belt but it still snows quite a bit.
| wing-_-nuts wrote:
| I have cerebral palsy. I'm from the south, and the few
| experiences I have with snow and ice have not been great,
| lol. A fall that might just bruise a hip in your 30's might
| well break it in you 70's and at that age, it's often a
| serious hit to your quality of life or even 'game over'. I
| want to be far enough north to rarely deal with dangerous
| heat, but far enough south that I'm not basically 'snowed
| in' given I seem to struggle with icey sidewalks.
| ghaff wrote:
| As someone else commented, you're probably talking about
| Pacific Northwest (Washington or Oregon coastal regions)
| then. It's not completely snow-free and can get fairly
| hot in the summers. But it's probably the best compromise
| between mostly snow-free and not-too-hot. Pretty much
| anyplace else in the North that (usually) doesn't get
| _too_ hot in the summer gets snow, if not the consistent
| heavy snowfalls of places in the lake effect belt.
|
| In addition to the larger cities, you have places like
| Corvallis where Oregon State is located.
| silisili wrote:
| This is basically what every human on Earth wants. Which
| is why the entire west coast is so expensive, because
| it's about the only place in the US that fits that bill.
| ghaff wrote:
| Plenty of people are fine with snow and ice in the winter
| --certainly relative to places where the alternative is
| >100 degree F summers. But I don't really disagree that
| many people like a Mediterranean climate (that the PNW
| also largely has except for the non-summer grayness)
| which tilts the scales. Also generally good outdoor
| recreation options for the most part.
| yesfitz wrote:
| The CityNerd, Ray Delahanty, just published a video on this
| topic. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fcn77OwF9XE (You can
| safely increase the speed of the video to 1.5x. He speaks
| slowly.)
|
| If you don't feel like watching the entire video, I'll just
| recommend Iowa City, Iowa. It ticks all your boxes except
| maybe climate change refuge. But with all the money you save
| on housing, you can buy a vacation cabin/bunker further
| north.
| merlin99000 wrote:
| Charlottesville, VA!!!
|
| The area between UVA's campus and downtown is walkable and
| continues to develop. Charlottesville has mild winters and
| beautiful falls. UVA has a gorgeous campus and lots of
| programming.
|
| The town punches above its weight with respect to the food
| scene and is surrounded by wineries. The Shenandoah mountains
| are close by. There is an airport in the town that makes it
| less remote.
| snapcaster wrote:
| There is some truth to this, but i worry detroit is just doing
| the same thing that blew them out last time (overdependence on a
| small group of extremely rich businessmen that can leave at any
| time). Hope this works out for them, Detroit has really suffered
| since the automakers left (and the riots)
| aketchum wrote:
| I interviewed for an internship at Ford in probably 2015. It was
| striking to me that they spent basically half the interview
| hyping up Detroit and convincing me that it would be a fun city
| to spend time in. It was clear that the company knew one of its
| biggest challenges to hiring was the location. Glad to hear
| things are improving but the reputation of Detroit still has a
| ways to go.
| suddenlybananas wrote:
| I wonder how the tariffs will affect this given how integrated
| Windsor is into Detroit's auto manufacturers.
| dhfbshfbu4u3 wrote:
| Detroit is buzzing because it's gone through a complete and total
| deflation. Things are up because they went so far down, not
| unlike say... Argentina today or the rest of the US in 3-5 years.
| santoshalper wrote:
| Pretty much. At some point there is nowhere to go but up.
| Still, it's nice to see.
| jonhohle wrote:
| Dead cat bounce.
| shipscode wrote:
| Spoiler: it's probably not
| yawgmoth wrote:
| In my experience, companies based in Michigan pay 20-50k lower
| and do not have staff/principal roles available. You have to find
| a remote role to stay competitive wage wise. Some companies are
| not willing to pay as much for Michigan workers as they are
| NY/SF/elsewhere workers, too.
|
| I think the reality is Columbus and Chicago are growing quicker
| than Detroit. The relative increase here might be "buzzing" but
| in absolute terms, it's desolate.
| pc86 wrote:
| Don't you think the delta in cost of living between Michigan
| and NYC/SF is a lot more than $50k/yr?
| llm_nerd wrote:
| Unfortunate timing for this to front page here given that Detroit
| and Michigan in general are going to endure some extremely rough
| times in the coming months and years. Detroits revival just took
| some direct hits.
| cobertos wrote:
| How do you mean? A lot of things have stayed pretty consistent
| here over the years. What are you expecting?
| 9283409232 wrote:
| Michigan's economy is tied to a lot of things that just
| received a tariff like manufacturing and agriculture.
| Michigan's largest exporter by far was Canada and 20% of the
| state's GDP comes from Canada, Mexico, and China imports.
| ocschwar wrote:
| Michigan relies on fast trade with Ontario. Anything that
| interrupts it hits Michigan hard.
| nilamo wrote:
| Detroit and Windsor are one city, with a country border down
| the middle. The new tarrifs will be really bad for both
| cities.
| dcchambers wrote:
| I really thought the major "rust belt" cities were going to blow
| up after the big COVID WFH push. Why spend 2-10x as much to live
| in one of four coastal metros when you could get the same pay
| while living somewhere much cheaper. The biggest issue with these
| cities in the last 50 years has been a lack of high paying jobs
| and WFH tech jobs essentially negate that issue.
|
| There are a ton of American cities that have fallen from their
| former glory but are full of cheap housing, interesting things,
| and lots of history.
|
| Shame it doesn't seem like that has panned out much.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| It seems evident that people, by and large, don't like freezing
| temperatures.
| lesuorac wrote:
| That and you don't get the same pay by living somewhere
| cheaper.
| pc86 wrote:
| Maybe. Lots of companies don't localize their pay, or
| localize it based on country. Even those that do if you're
| comparing, for example, Pittsburgh and NYC/SF, you're
| unlikely to come out ahead in NYC/SF especially after you
| factor in state income tax.
| francisofascii wrote:
| NYC, Boston, and Toronto are still bustling. The uncertainty
| of work from home with RTO mandates popping up at a moments
| notice keep people from making the jump.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| It is better to use nationwide migration statistics over
| large periods of time rather than selectively choosing a
| few metros as a data point.
|
| As I understand, it might also simply be biology that older
| bodies like higher temperatures because it results in less
| pain.
| nancyminusone wrote:
| I'll take the cold over water shortages, wildfires,
| earthquakes, hurricanes, or excessive heat any day.
|
| I wonder if we'll see more people coming to the rust belt as
| the climate gets worse.
| pc86 wrote:
| "Just move north" is a common refrain from people who don't
| understand what climate change means.
| nancyminusone wrote:
| Could you expand on this point? Are climate refugees not
| expected, at least in the short term?
| pc86 wrote:
| It's a byproduct of the naive belief that climate change
| means it gets hotter (and little/nothing else), to which
| "just move north" is a logical conclusion. The truth is
| closer to climate change means more extreme weather
| happens everywhere, and things get hotter up until -- and
| here's where my knowledge of science may be much less up-
| to-date -- a critical mass of ice at the poles melts, and
| which point the temperature plummets.
|
| By definition a lot of areas will be hit hard and some
| areas will be hit less hard but it's not going to be
| along a north-south axis.
| 1123581321 wrote:
| It is happening, but it takes time as those cities can only
| grow as fast as palatable housing stock comes online. The
| largest percentage growths in home values, with short days on
| market, have have been in Rockford, Akron, Fort Wayne, Lansing,
| etc. There is new construction in all of these markets, but
| much of it is from rehabbing old manufacturing buildings,
| another limiter, or from a mix of public and private money that
| city government can only consider so quickly. Economic growth
| is mostly in services to support the remote jobs. Building new
| primary businesses (sell out of local market) might never
| happen. So they look just as sleepy as ever even though there's
| a lot of activity in housing and new transplants.
| ndileas wrote:
| I live in Rochester NY, grew up in Buffalo. Housing markets
| here were nuts the last couple years, probably due to this
| effect (although laughable compared to SF I'm sure) and pent up
| demand. I'm not sure I really want it to "blow up" any more,
| although I'm not much of a big city guy - I like going to the
| same diner every Saturday and reading at home. Life is pretty
| good.
| francisofascii wrote:
| Yep, I know a guy who moved to Rochester metro from the NYC
| metro post COVID. I was kinda shocked to see the high prices
| of housing there.
| yardie wrote:
| The sun belt took wind out of their sails. And even they are
| starting to see softening demand. Miami just cancelled an
| A-class commercial high rise due to weak demand. In Austin,
| rents are tanking.
|
| It's very hard to revive a town or city when the tax base is
| way down. I thought Detroit was going to succeed but they
| simply have too much ground to manage with their revenue. And
| there isn't a way to shrink a shrinking city.
| nradov wrote:
| Insurance premium increases have killed a lot of the housing
| cost advantage that Florida used to have.
| boringg wrote:
| And Canadians have been shedding property in droves due to
| high cost (USD-CAD), your comment on insurance and general
| antagonistic policies at a Federal level.
| arrowsmith wrote:
| Why are the premiums going up? Hurricanes?
| kccqzy wrote:
| Many large insurance companies leaving Florida. Their
| last-resort insurance, Citizens Property Insurance Corp,
| is perpetually one bad hurricane away from insolvency.
| Well technically they cannot be insolvent but they are
| allowed a premium surcharge on everyone, including those
| who do not have their insurance.
| jetrink wrote:
| Increasing hurricane risk yes, but also a dysfunctional
| insurance market. There's a business model where roofing
| companies will approach homeowners telling them they have
| hurricane damage and are eligible to receive a free roof.
| The hurricane might passed through years before, but any
| damage that was overlooked is still the responsibility of
| the insurance company. The homeowners are surprised to
| learn that their roof has damage, since they haven't
| noticed anything wrong (and there is in fact no damage),
| but free is free, so they sign the contract. The roofing
| company files a claim, the insurance company denies it,
| the roofing company sues, and since a lawsuit costs more
| than a roof, the insurance company backs down. Then after
| this has happened repeatedly, the insurance company
| raises their rates or leaves the state.
| lowercased wrote:
| We did this. Hail damage. There wasn't _no damage_. We 'd
| had a hail storm. But... we've had them before. The root
| was 17 years old at that point, and... the last storm
| sort of tipped things over to the "needs repair" side of
| things. We may have been able to leave it a while longer,
| but do we wait until it's leaking, causing more damage?
| Insurance company sent an inspector, took pics, etc.
| Interestingly, they denied the claims of many of our
| neighbors, but ours was 'bad enough' to justify
| replacement. This still cost us several thousand of of
| pocket - it wasn't like it was 'free roof!' time.
| jollyllama wrote:
| >It's very hard to revive a town or city when the tax base is
| way down. I thought Detroit was going to succeed but they
| simply have too much ground to manage with their revenue. And
| there isn't a way to shrink a shrinking city.
|
| That's one way to look at it. The problems of decades of
| urban decay make these places unattractive to outsiders, so
| it's a catch-22.
| toast0 wrote:
| > And there isn't a way to shrink a shrinking city.
|
| You could probably disincorporate parts of the city, but I
| assume that would require consent of the owners/residents and
| the county. Of course, reducing the incorporated area also
| reduces revenue, so it might leave you with similar revenue
| vs cost mismatches, but a smaller area.
| gcanyon wrote:
| Weather is a thing, along with infrastructure.
| no_wizard wrote:
| Most companies will cut your pay based on where you live,
| though.
|
| You aren't usually paid the same. That isn't the norm.
|
| Secondly and probably more important is there is zero
| guarantees that WFH will be supported by the work places they
| can support it will, we have seen a huge RTO surge. I'd hate to
| be in one of these cities and get that call.
|
| If WFH opportunities had legal protections and incentives it'd
| be a different story I imagine
| pc86 wrote:
| Whether or not locality-based pay is the norm is an open
| question. Every place I've ever worked had a budget for the
| role and that was that, but most places I've worked only hire
| folks within the US who don't need visa sponsorship so that's
| already a smaller group than "anyone who can type JavaScript
| into a computer."
|
| Would you rather live and rent in NYC and work from home for
| 4 years until asked to commute again, or live and rent in
| Detroit or Pittsburgh or Indianapolis and take that $50-400k
| you saved and move?
|
| Moving is easy and if you need to move to support an RTO
| mandate, _especially_ if you were hired remote and weren 't
| local you can almost certainly negotiate some relocation
| assistance. It's not a big deal to move unless you have kids
| in school which if you went remote during COVID and had a kid
| basically immediately is still likely not a huge issue.
| Moving in middle school or high school can be impactful,
| moving during kindergarten or first grade is a nothingburger.
| ghaff wrote:
| Even if there aren't location-based salaries as such,
| there's a lot of "ROFL, we're not going to match your
| Facebook offer." I worked for someone who eventually ended
| up with very few California employees and, I believe,
| eventually closed their relatively small office there.
|
| >Moving is easy
|
| I disagree with this. If you have a relatively small number
| of possessions living by yourself in an apartment, maybe.
| But, as you say, with a partner and even kids with an
| established circle of friends--and maybe a house, is
| definitely not easy.
| dcchambers wrote:
| Yes, in some cases location-based pay is a thing.
|
| But $150K in Detroit feels a hell of a lot richer than $250K
| in SF.
| nilamo wrote:
| That did start to happen, but rent near downtown Detroit is
| >$2k/month, which pushes out most of the people that want to
| live there.
| tokioyoyo wrote:
| Generally, people like to have fun and will pay premiums to
| live in cities where stuff happens. Cheap housing and money
| aren't the only motivators, otherwise we would have a different
| landscape.
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| That said, cheap housing/warehouse space often leads to an
| explosion of art and music in sufficiently populated cities.
| ghaff wrote:
| Generally is doing a lot of work there. There are vast
| suburbs (including Silicon Valley) and exurbs in the US even
| before you get genuinely rural.
|
| I can drive an hour into some large cities where "fun
| happens" although I have lots of activities around where I
| live too.
| jt2190 wrote:
| Housing is cheap because the job market is poor. Should
| _enough_ remote workers choose to relocate to the same rust-
| belt city we'd see higher housing prices in that city. The
| challenge is that rust-belt cities are just not desirable
| enough for enough remote workers to reverse the decades of
| decline. Furthermore, there is no reason that remote workers
| would cluster by geography other than fear of loosing their
| remote job and having to return to office, so I don't think
| remote workers will be able to turn the tide of the rust-belt.
| schmichael wrote:
| > Why spend 2-10x as much to live in one of four coastal metros
|
| I think you answered your own question: it's not (entirely) an
| economic decision. Weather, culture, nature, civic amenities.
| There's a lot in life that money can't buy. Sure I could own a
| McMansion on a palatial plot of prairie, but what if the square
| footage of my house and acreage of my yard isn't what's
| important to me?
| Yeul wrote:
| Being surrounded by Christian conservative Trump voters is
| not how everyone wants to live their life.
|
| HN probably consists of a lot of people who are perfectly
| content spending their entire life looking at a screen
| perfectly oblivious of what is going on.
| Telemakhos wrote:
| There's a major issue in American cities that is unmentionable
| in polite society: the so-called Curley Effect [0], named after
| a Boston politician who drove the old Boston Brahmins out of
| their city by taxing them out of town and pandering to Irish
| immigrants, making the city as a whole poorer. It turns out
| that politics is not so straightforward as to reward
| politicians who improve their cities: instead, a politician can
| leverage group (ethnic, racial, whatever) differences to reward
| supporters with largesse designed to render them dependent on
| the politician, while driving out those who, by nature of their
| independence, could oppose the politician. In effect, there is
| a substantial likelihood that American cities decay because
| politicians consolidate power through the kinds of high taxes
| and poor services that drive away high earners.
|
| WFH workers are very independent: they could move to a city or
| from it with no regard for the job market. That makes them
| prime targets for eliminating from a city under the Curley
| effect.
|
| [0]
| https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/shleifer/files/curley_effe...
| agoodusername63 wrote:
| I was really hoping for this too.
|
| I love WFH and I hope I never have to work in an office again.
| I was hoping the obvious financial efficiency improvements
| would have made the concept stick more and enable more mobility
| in the US
|
| unfortunately it looks like we couldn't get over our need for
| employee control even for types of work that is largely online
| anyways. I'm still sad that it isn't likely to grow much.
| eduction wrote:
| Detroit's homicide rate as of January is about 4x the national
| average, 31.9 per 100k vs 7.4 nationally.
|
| https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/detroit-city/20...
| add-sub-mul-div wrote:
| Like any city most of these would happen in easily avoidable
| areas and there's no reason to live in fear about it unless
| you're one of those people for whom it's a hobby.
| knowitnone wrote:
| "easily avoidable areas" as if criminals don't have cars?
| Fripplebubby wrote:
| I guess my question is, are all these startups going to Detroit
| because of the positive vibes, or are they actually getting
| compelling direct subsidies / credits / etc from the government?
|
| (Not that there is anything wrong with giving or taking subsidies
| necessarily, but that might paint a more accurate picture of the
| incentives in place)
| parpfish wrote:
| all the apocalyptic stories about Detroit's decay after the '08
| collapse and one thing that stuck with me was that there were
| serious discussion about razing entire empty neighborhoods to
| deal with the fact the city was a lot smaller than it used to be.
|
| In my area, there are a lot of communities that have also gone
| through decades of contraction and are now sparsely populated
| with a lot of dilapidated structures. It's depressing and
| requires keeping around a lot of infrastructure that these areas
| can't afford to support.
|
| I'm torn between thinking a) we should raze these unusable
| buildings, tear out some roads, eventually revert to nature OR b)
| start a massive reinvestment program to give stuff away and bring
| in some new blood to revitalize.
| GenerWork wrote:
| I left Michigan about 3 years ago after living around Detroit for
| 7 years. Tech jobs there are primarily with the Big 3, and the
| cult known as Rocket. There are places like Ann Arbor, but again,
| the opportunities are limited.
|
| As for Detroit itself, I feel like I've seen this headline every
| year for the past decade. I'm not saying that Detroit hasn't made
| progress (it absolutely has, go visit the refurbished train
| station), but compared to other cities it's still lagging.
| technotarek wrote:
| As a native (suburban) Detroiter (who departed 20 years ago), I
| don't want to throw shade but articles like these rarely give a
| good sense of the size or scope of decades of decay. There are
| still miles (and miles) of apocalyptic looking neighborhoods. As
| a teenager, we had our pick of hundreds of abandoned warehouses
| to party ("rave").
|
| I'd love to see it flourish, and maybe if the area could get past
| its car addiction, I'd even want to call it home again one day.
|
| *Removed inaccurate statement about the city's size.
| Andrew-Koper wrote:
| There's a lot of good stuff going on in Detroit. I've worked in
| tech in Detroit for quite some time. The NewLab building that
| opened a year ago next to the recently-rehabbed, stunningly-
| beautiful, gigantic Michigan Central, is one-block by one-block
| and several stories tall and an amazing innovation hub. GM and
| Ford are two of the largest companies in the world, and - this
| isn't obvious because of their main industry - each employ
| 4,000-6,000 tech and software engineers. Dan Gilbert is an ultra-
| successful, entrepreneur genius, and he and his companies support
| an entrepreneurial culture and ecosystem in downtown Detroit.
|
| If you're a ycombinator type person, and you move to Detroit,
| you're going to live in a cool neighborhood like Woodbridge,
| Corktown, Hubbard Farms, Midtown, Milwaukee Junctions, etc; go
| out for drinks at Ladder 4, Motor City Wine, Kiesling, etc; go
| out to eat at Ima, Baobab Fare, Batch, etc; go out for
| entertainment at Spot Lite, Lincoln Street Art Park, Outer Limits
| etc; and enjoy all of the culture.
| ElevenLathe wrote:
| I don't get to Detroit much but do live in another rust belt town
| in Michigan and things do seem to be looking up a bit. There is
| noticeable investment downtown and property values in the city
| limits (as opposed to the surrounding white flight townships) are
| rising for basically the first time in my life (though another
| way to say this is that housing is becoming less affordable).
|
| There is still a long way to go though, and while I moved back
| from Austin once my job went remote during COVID, none of the
| other bourgeois high achievers from my public magnet school have
| done so -- as you'd expect they are all in NYC, Chicago, LA,
| Atlanta, etc. Brain drain is a real problem and WFH doesn't
| really seem to be helping.
|
| I don't think people outside the Midwest understand what a
| disaster the last ~50 years have been for the industrial
| heartland. I don't know what the answer is, but even if it's
| whatever is happening in Detroit, it will be decades before these
| cities feel anything like whole.
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